A 43-year-old man who suffered a tear in the aorta, the main artery that supplies blood from the heart to other parts of the body, underwent surgery at a city hospital last month.
Sujan Chowdhury, 43, is back home and was doing well, said a doctor.
“The patient arrived at our hospital at 2am. He needed immediate surgery. He was vomiting blood,” said Atanu Saha, senior consultant cardiac surgeon at the RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences.
Saha said the surgery was difficult for two reasons: the tear was in a distant section of the aorta and very hard to access; blood supply to a part of the body had to be stopped for about two hours for the operation.
“The blood supply to the brain and lower part of the body was maintained with separate channels to preserve the vital organs,” Saha said.
The aorta is made of three concentric layers and the tear had developed in the inner layer. “There was a threat of rupture. If that happened, the patient could have died,” Saha said. The body had to be cooled down to 18 degrees Celsius so that oxygen requirement was far less than what the body requires when its temperature is normal, said Saha. “This technique is known as deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA),” he said.
The entire surgery took 18 hours and blood supply was cut off partially for about two hours. Chowdhury is now free to live like any healthy human being and perform all activities, Saha said.